Kathleen Rogers

Kathleen Rogers http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/ Kathleen Rogers is an artist & lecturer based in the UK. Her work is primarily concerned with science and technology. en Copyright 2007 Thu, 23 Aug 2007 15:57:33 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss aminima Publication of text in aminima. Art journal focusing on contemporary, conceptual, new media art. The magazine follows a methodology which resembles that of scientific magazines and the website contains an archive of texts written by people whose work reflects on aesthetic, technological and political issues. We Make Money not Art]]> http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2007/08/aminima.htm http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2007/08/aminima.htm Journal current Thu, 23 Aug 2007 15:57:33 +0000 Art of Creation Future Exhibition Exhibition of installation, Tremor within the forthcoming group show, Genesis - The Art of Creation,Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne, Switzerland. 3rd November 2007 to 17th February 2008

Genesis, Analysis, Code, Playing Games and Chaos – these are the five dramatic focal points of this exhibition. They connect and combine scientific and artistic aspects of genetics and creation in a dramatically designed presentation of paintings, interactive installations, light installations, video projections, cartoons, photographs and sculptures by international artists such as Mona Hatoum, Ross Bleckner, Mark Francis, Chuck Close, Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, Marcel Duchamp, Dieter Roth and Mark Dion. These heterogeneous exhibits will convey the most significant research results of the 20th and 21st centuries, placing them in an artistic context that confirms this issue's relevance to society, its wide emotional spectrum and its decade-long, unchanging political importance.

Fabienne Eggelhöfer Curator ]]> http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2007/08/art_of_creation.htm http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2007/08/art_of_creation.htm Journal Wed, 08 Aug 2007 16:32:18 +0000 Tremor Recent Exhibition April - August 2007 Single screen video projection and sound work with aquariums of live zebrafish based on themes drawn from developmental biology and genetics. Commissioned by Emilie Gomart, guest curator for the Centraal Museum, Utrecht as part of Genesis (Life at the end of the information age), an international exhibition featuring work from artists and scientists and describing parallels between art, the life sciences, computer technology and genetics and presenting key historical models of life systems such as the Crick and Watson DNA model, early computer films, cybernetic art, genetic artefacts and live organisms.

Still from video installation, Tremor, Genesis 2007

Still from video installation, Tremor, Genesis 2007

Zebrafish are part of a pantheon of model organisms deliberately bred to study vertabrate development. The fish are small and breed quickly and inexpensive to maintain in large numbers and they are used to search for mutations randomly and then selectively bred. Several genes that control the expression of the human body plan have nucleotide sequences found in a common pattern in zebrafish. These patterns are exposed in the zebrafish genome using Mendelian forward genetics. Microscopic evaluations capture the essence of the life force as movement, but paradoxically, making and umaking the gene requires a pathological trespass into the mystery it seeks to reveal. In the microscopic study of fetal growth in living mutations, physical contact and looking create tremors and palpitations that are tactile and reactive and invariably fatal. Visual distortions, physical vibrations, reflections, shadows, scratches, detritus and microbial parasites randomly appear. In Tremor, the difficult co-ordination of the eye and hand, the limitations of a fixed viewpoint and narrow field of view, the optical ambiguities, crude movements, anticipated touch and sensory detail are used to engage the viewer in a visceral and psychological reading of a mediated life form.

Still from video installation, Tremor, Genesis 2007

Photo, Aquariums of mutant zebrafish from installation, Tremor, Genesis 2007

Tremor was made with the scientific facilities and support in the Netherlands and the UK. Video microscopy facilities and collaboration were generously provided by Jonathan Clarke and David Becker at the Centre for Cell and Molecular Dynamics, University College, London and Carole Wilson, manager of UCL Zebrafish Facility. Zebrafish were donated by Bas Defize and Dr. S. Schulte-Merker from the Hubrecht Laboratory. Audio design made in collaboration with David Strang. ]]> http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2007/05/tremor.htm http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2007/05/tremor.htm Work current dna installation Sat, 05 May 2007 17:43:46 +0000 Mutamorphosis Future Conference 8th - 10th of November 2007, Prague, Czech Republic. Presentation of a paper entitled, Bacteria, Geology and Blood, for the MutaMorphosis: Challenging Arts and Sciences International Conference organised by CIANT as part of the Leonardo 40th anniversary celebrations.

The conference will explore the major mutations that are affecting the future of our world. Artists, scientists and researchers will present papers on the evolution of life and the societies they constitute, and on modes of knowledge, expression and communication of humans, animals and other forms of life. The event will concentrate on the growing interest -- within the worlds of the arts, sciences and technologies -- in EXTREME AND HOSTILE ENVIRONMENTS. These environments appear as symptomatic indicators of the mutations that are taking place; they are potential vectors that make possible an awareness of the different problems at the origin of the disturbances that threaten the ensemble of the Earth’s eco-systems.

]]> http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2007/04/mutamorphosis.htm http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2007/04/mutamorphosis.htm Journal current publication text Fri, 06 Apr 2007 17:03:16 +0000 Polka

]]> http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/12/silence.htm http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/12/silence.htm R & D heart heartbeat polka Mon, 11 Dec 2006 21:51:40 +0000 Welcome

Photo from R&D, work in progress, Chrysalis 2006

Welcome to my site. What follows is a combination of review, association and research - a place for me to store ideas, share work and try things out. My current R&D focuses on the biological origins of the embryonic heart, the beauty and the mystery of the morphogenetic process, and the visual poetry of the beating heart and flowing blood. In my research, as always, I'm trying to explore how aspects of human biology can become more directly accessible in emotional and aesthetic terms. ]]> http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/12/welcome.htm http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/12/welcome.htm About welcome Mon, 11 Dec 2006 12:47:44 +0000 Cardiogenesis Hubrecht Developmental Biology Lab, Utrecht University. From my Project Notebooks: Genetic Sculpture The themes of this project focus on the signals of life and death and how these are built into the biochemical instructions of the living cell. Installation artworks are planned that will present and explore how the architecture of the body is genetically determined based on living heart morphogenesis and the prolonging of the limbo state.

This is work in progress. A still from a time-lapse video of Oyster Mushrooms Pleurotus Ostreatus

Conserved Topography Genes that disrupt pathways associated with cytoskeleton, cell adhesion or formation of a highly organised extracellular matrix during organ formation have the potential of perturbing normal heart looping as well as the formation of a single heart tube. In addition, if there are perturbations resulting in endocardial changes and the dorsal mesocardium, these will also have adverse effects on looping. What causes cells to line up and make a heart tube ? How are pre-cardiac cells at the molecular level identified? In exploring the embryonic stages leading from early gastrulation to the formation of a tubular heart the work will evoke the implications of genetic metaphors and allow spectators to remotely view the signals of death in the genesis of life.

Heart cross section

Notebook Drawings

]]> http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/10/trecht_heart_storming.htm http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/10/trecht_heart_storming.htm R & D cells current heart Tue, 31 Oct 2006 08:32:27 +0000 Signal Cascade

Zebrafish facility at the Hubrecht Developmental Biology Laboratory, Utrecht University

The Perishable Soft Image Genes that control other genes have nucleotide seqeunces that are conserved accross the whole animal kingdom. Repeated functions, organizers and zones are transplanted into developing embryonic fish to effect a developmental cascade. The result is mutant individuals in which one body part is replaced by another. Chiasm A visible x shaped structure formed by homologous chromatids in prophase of meisos and which represents the site of crossing over and exchange of segments of DNA between homologous chromatids (recombination) by the mechanism of breakage and reunion.

The more biologists learn about genes, the less sure they seem to become of what a gene really is. Knowledge about the structure and function of the gene abounds, but also, the gene has become curiously intangible. Relating the gene as a molecular biological unit to the gene as Mendelian factor produces internal inconsistencies; but genes have been deeply illusive entities even with the traditional Mendelian framework. Peter Beurton, Raphael Falk, Hans-Jorg-Rheinberger The Concept of the Gene in Development and Evolution

Time Insights into biological phenomena made by molecular geneticists show biological changes in the structure of DNA over time and detail what happens to a molecular structure and gene expression in the period of one mitosis to the next. Chromosomes condense during mitosis and through the motion of intermingling and disentanglement become separate entities. There is a time based "betwixt and between" state in this biochemical condensation that remains unfathomable. In molecular genetics hybrid forms of "betwixt and between" are collected and stored. Potential states of being that are neither fully alive, biologically dead nor naturally self-regulating can be sustained experimentally is a state of permanent existence. Molecular geneticists working on the extreme limits of gene regulation and expression in gene therapy and retro viral research constantly evolve and apply models of this "betwixt and between" state. The chirality, handedness and silencing of genes and proteins can be reworked and re-mapped and provide science with an emergent and phenomenological model of life that correspondingly provides the subtle interactions, cell dynamics and vectors of death.

Originally, epigenetics referred to the study of the way genes and their products bring the phenotype into being. Today, it is primarily concerned with the mechanisms through which cells become committed to a particular form or function and through which that functional or structural state is then transmitted in cell lineages. In particular, recognizing that there are epigenetic inheritance systems through which non-DNA variations can be transmitted in cell and organismal lineages. Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2002)

Signal Cascade In genomic research the epigenetic vectors of death can be reworked to provide images and physical models of cell migration and differentiation. My artistic research is to understand what science knows about genetic transcription and to address what can be registered as occurring during the morphogenesis of a living organism. When biophysicists predict and provide a three dimensional structure of a protein molecule they also generate more extravagant visual complexity in the living cell. A pool of cells under a light microscope, seen as a swarming colony, has infinite dimensionality and scale. Ancestral affinities are fluidic. The appearance of spontaneous correlative phenomena at the level of RNA are visualised using different conceptual and optical tools and techniques.]]> http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/10/signal_cascade.htm http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/10/signal_cascade.htm R & D current dna heart storage Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:28:48 +0000 Zebrafish Zoo

Zebrafish facility at the Hubrecht Developmental Biology Laboratory, Utrecht University

The transparency and motion of the fish coalesce and suggest the change, migration and transcription of bases of DNA

Biotic Life In genetic studies, the zebrafish is perceived as a kind of ensemble of characteristics. Genetic point mutations, deletions and insertions are used to determine phenotypic consequences. The cutting and tearing apart of the zebrafish at the molecular level and observing the regrowth of its body is replayed and replayed as a way of learning and harnessing it's immune system. As the fish are bred their immune defences are both encouraged by the duty of care provided by technicians and tested to the limit by forced mutations. As living entities they have a twilight biotic existence that is easily interrupted and dependent on scientific interpretation. A surreal counterpart of their functionality as genetic models is their imagined transformation into spectral and mirror images of potential humans.

Zebrafish Danio Rerio is part of a pantheon of model organisms used to study vertebrate development. Zebrafish are used as a genetic model system because they are small, breed quickly and are inexpensive to maintain in large numbers. These characteristics make the zebrafish useful for classical genetic analysis. Classical genetics refers to the search for mutations that distort specific biological events without foreknowledge of the genes or gene involved.

Breeding Zebrafish mating pairs yield hundreds of embryos at weekly intervals. Their mating habits are diurnal, initiated by light. Zebrafish embryos are obtained by placing an adult male and female together in a breeding cage in the evening. Fertilisation occurs externally. Male and female gametes are released into the water and the activated sperm must quickly encounter and fertilise the eggs. The fertilised eggs fall through a mesh at the bottom of the tank. The eggs are then collected and raised in Petri dishes in a temperature-controlled incubator and are accessible for observation and manipulation throughout embryonic development. The timing of developmental events is affected by temperature. Higher and lower temperatures have an effect on the speed of development. The striking transparency of the embryos facilitates the observation of morphological structures in vivo without the need for fixing and staining. The breeding tanks transform the fish into novel living artefacts.

Mutagenesis and Transplantation Chimeras Green Fluorescent Protein probes reduce the zebrafish to a series of macabre abstractions. Migrating cells are labelled. Genes are silenced and malformations witnessed.

Faulty Genes There are many mutations affecting cardiac morphogenesis in zebrafish and many of these have been identified according to specific genes.

Fate Maps Absent ventricle, randomised heart looping, no valves, no heart beat, silent atrium, large heart, both chambers beat weakly, reduced heart tissue, isolated cell contraction, spasmodic beat, cardia bifida, no endocardium.

]]> http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/10/zebra_fish.htm http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/10/zebra_fish.htm R & D dna heart Wed, 25 Oct 2006 13:45:12 +0000 Cell Theory

Growing Oyster Mushrooms

Cultural and Cosmic Evolution In 1839 Schleiden and Schwann proposed cell theory. Stating that cells have universal occurrence and are the basic units of an organism. Cells are like lakes that drain into bodies. Organic matter is energetic pattern and moving order. The formative process giving rise to the structure of nerves, muscle, vein and bone is the same subtly ordered formative processes as the generation of the mind and consciousness.

Notebook Drawings

The instruments we use become extensions of our bodies. In order to operate instruments skillfully we internalise them in the form of kinesthetic and perceptual habits. Our instruments become part of us and modify us, gradually altering the basis of our affective relationship to ourselves and each other. In cell work microscopes represent physical tools for the mind that attach to the body. The scene below, on the stage of the scope is closer to the mind than the eye. The colour and movement of live cell imaging is shadowy, delicate and unformed. Cells were described by Robert Hooke in the 17th century. An optical microscope revealed box like structures in cork. These micrographic images of dissected cork look like randomised mosaics and netting and consequently were described as cells.

In the Microscope. Here too are the dreaming landscapes, lunar, derelict. Here too are the masses, tillers of the soil. And cells, fighters who lay down their lives for a song. Here too are cemeteries, fame and snow. And I hear the murmuring, the revolt of immense estates. Miroslav Holub Shedding Life

In 1849 cell division was witnessed for the first time. The cells under the microscope spontaneously divided along their centres again and again. This observation later led Rudolph Vichow to propose that all cells come from pre-existing cells. An assertion that gave rise to the idea of a spontaneously generating universal life process. Powerful microscopes and biochemical techniques are used to unravel the chemical reactions and molecular structures within the cell. Time lapse live cell imaging is generally automated and the depth of field adjusted with laser accuracy. Different lenses allow for different visual representation and interpretation. Fluorescent dyes created from the cells of luminous organisms are introduced into cells to trace the movement and timing of spontaneous events.

Cell Guts Around the nucleus are a mass of membrane bound organelles. These stand in relation to the cell as organs do to the whole organism. Some have a digestive function analogous to the stomach. DNA and chromosomes in the nucleus rely on the cell guts to manufacture proteins, enzymes and hormones. The symbiotic cell bodies co-exist and co-create each other in the choreographed dance of transcription.

]]> http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/10/stem.htm http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/10/stem.htm R & D cells Wed, 25 Oct 2006 10:02:50 +0000 DNA.CORN The Gateway Project, an international collaboration between artists and scientists.

Photos from the gallery exhibition, DNA.CORN at the Lab, San Francisco

Butterfly Chromosomes DNA.CORN is a furnace of infinite randomness based on the sounds of popcorn, video projections, ultra-violet dioramas and mock chromosomes in the shape of black butterflies. DNA.CORN utilises the sound and image of popcorn as an anthropological and biological microsystem. A darkly lit ambient space with table top dioramas is used to produce an emotionally arresting scene. Several large video projections and a thousand black silhouetted butterflies inhabit the space accompanied by loud, violently stochastic sounds of popping corn. Sound design in collaboration with digital composer, Carl Stone. View the DNA.CORN Gallery Residency The project was produced as a result of a ten week artist's residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin County and extended the work, The Imagination of Matter presented at NOISE in Cambridge. The work was made in collaboration with the Lab and was supported by The British Council and NEA. The Gateway Project was curated by Laura Brun. Presentation and Publications Subtle Technologies Conference, University of Toronto, Canada. Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science and Technology by Stephen Wilson ]]> http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/09/dnacorn.htm http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/09/dnacorn.htm Work butterfly current dna installation maize Sat, 30 Sep 2006 16:55:16 +0000 Heart The Anatomy of the Heart as a Pump The heart is a muscular pump that propels blood into the arterial (delivery) system and receives blood from the venous (return) system. The heart is divided into right and left sides. Each side has a receiving layer (atrium) and a pumping chamber (ventricle). The right atrium receives unoxygenated venous blood from three sources: the inferior vena cava, which drains blood from the lower half of the body, the superior vena cava from the upper half, and the coronary sinus, which drains blood from the heart muscle. The blood flows from the right atrium to the right ventricle. Ventricle contraction ejects blood through the pulmonary valve in the pulmonary artery and then to the lungs. Blood returns via the pulmonary veins into the left atrium and then to the ventricle. The left ventricle ejects blood via the aortic valve into the aorta and this is distributed throughout the body. As blood passes through the lung tissue (pulmonary tissue) red blood cells exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen and return this to the system. As blood pass through the body it surrenders its oxygen and accumulates carbon dioxide from metabolising tissue. Mass The wall of the heart has three layers: the inner layer, endocardium, the middle layer, the mycocardium, which forms the main mass of the heart: and the outer layer, the epicardium.

Sparks The heart has a skeleton made up of four fibrous rings (annuli) and non conductive tissue that connects them into a single framework. Each annulus is the supporting structure for one of the four valves of the heart and the connecting site of the muscular network that comprises the four chambers. Because the fibrous skeleton is non conductive the musculature of the atria normally is separated electrically from the ventricular muscle. The specialised conduction system that coordinates the rhythm of atria and ventricles, the atrioventricular node and bundle of His, passes through the fibrous connective tissue. Chemical Electricity in the Heart The cell membrane is semi permeable two layer lipid envelope that maintains the inside of the cell, a high concentration of potassium (K+) and low concentration of sodium (NA+) outside the cell - and outside the cell a high concentration of NA+ and a low concentration of K+. The voltage inside a resting (polarised) cardiac cell is negative with respect to the outside of the cell. in large part because of the membranes permeability to K+ and impermeability to NA+ during diastole.

]]> http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/09/hearts.htm http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/09/hearts.htm R & D heart heartbeat polka Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:47:26 +0000 Fungi

Fungus and Flesh I have developed a simple experimental home lab growing fungi from spawn cultures and use photographic and time-lapse video to record their morphogenesis.This a technically unsophisticated approach to growing and translating natural phenomena as emergent sculptural form. I am linking shapes to human embryonic growth. Witnessing the cellular growth process of fungi as their generations bleed through a surface and turn into a texture of flesh is both enchanting and uncanny. Thread like cells, hyphae form a subterranean, branched, mycelium web. They grow without light or chlorophyll and cannot absorb carbon dioxide from the air. In nature, fungi appear mostly in autumn, the season of decay when their ecological function is to bring about dissolution. This saprophytic aspect of fungi and their look and shape and skin like membranes - the warts and patches - the veils and gills - the cavities and phallic shaped fingers defy the classifying intellect. Fungi have large cells with a membrane bound nuclei that exhibit complex gravity. They seem to appear haphazardly the rhizormorpic web spreads through the soil and over the surface the host, keeping an organic connection. During the growth process the opposing forces of entropy and growth visually compete and their flesh is seen to pass through strange transformations simultaneously expressing life and decay.

It's useless to pretend to know mushrooms, they escape your erudition. The more you know about them - about telling, for example, a Spthyema Foetida from Collybia Platyphylla, the less sure you feel about indentifying them John Cage, Composer and Mycolologist For the Birds

View the FUNGI Gallery ]]> http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/09/london.htm http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/09/london.htm R & D cells current evolution Fri, 15 Sep 2006 14:21:50 +0000 Danse Macabre The Darkness of Ruysch Series of works based on the famous anatomical collections of Frederik Ruysch. Anatomical collections suspend life forms in death as embalmed artefacts. Ruysch dressed specimens in period costumes made by his daughter. The recurrence of embryos and foetuses in the collection echo our fears of the complexity and fragility of the human being in development.

Child's Head with Turkish Cap, attributed to Frederik Ruysch. Photo, Rosamond Purcell

]]> http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/09/danse_macabre.htm http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/09/danse_macabre.htm R & D Thu, 14 Sep 2006 11:00:40 +0000 Drawings

]]> http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/09/pulse.htm http://www.kathleenrogers.co.uk/2006/09/pulse.htm R & D Wed, 13 Sep 2006 20:05:48 +0000